Lockout

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Aboard Pangia 10 (2230 Zulu)

Carol Crandall still liked being called “Head Mama” whenever she served as chief of the cabin crew, although at the age of thirty-two she was hardly a grizzled veteran. She thought of her lead position now as one of her more junior flight attendants, Kate Guthrie, pushed through the first class divider curtains to see her. Carol motioned Kate into the forward galley as she moved back into the cabin to refill the wine glass of an elegantly coiffed lady who had been buried in a book since takeoff from Tel Aviv.

Still not drunk, Carol thought. She was one of their million-mile frequent fliers who had already downed the better part of a bottle of Chablis, the aura of very expensive perfume surrounding her.

Uncharacteristically, the lady glanced up and nodded thank you—first time she’d responded for hours. Carol suppressed a chuckle and joined Kate in the galley, pulling the curtains as she motioned back toward the cabin.

“She’s up to page 200. She keeps re-reading certain parts.”

“I’m not following you,” Kate said, looking puzzled.

“The Vogue model in 4A. She’s got a custom cover on her book and thinks I can’t see.”

“Okay.”

“It’s the latest mommy porn book everyone’s reading. Wild sex by page eighty-six. Really wild!”

“How do you know… never mind.” Kate was smiling, but thinly, as she waved it away, and Carol could see something was really tugging at her.

“What’s up, sweetie?”

“A worried passenger back there, who now has me worried. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but…”

“Tell me.”

“This guy tells me he’s an amateur astronomer… he owns a small telescope and belongs to some amateur organizations… and he’s telling me this because he’s in a window seat and he swears the stars are all wrong.”

Carol arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“No, listen… I don’t think he’s a kook. He’s on the left side and says he should be looking at something very different than the Big Dipper and the North Star, which is what he’s seeing, on the left. That would make sense, right? The North Star should be on our right?”

“I suppose. What’s the point, Kate? Passengers get mixed up all the time?”

“It’s on our left.”

“What’s on our left?”

“The North Star.”

Carol frowned. A call chime rang, and she needed to check it out.

“See, if we’re flying west toward New York like we’re supposed to be, the North Star would be on our right. So would the Big Dipper. I leaned down to see what he was talking about, and the man is right. The Dipper is on our left, the North Star is on our left, and the only planets visible are on our right. Mars, for instance.”

“He could be wrong. You could be wrong.”

“I’m not an idiot, Carol. I’m a Wisconsin farm girl… I know the night sky, too.”

“What’s the bottom line here? The world is upside down?”

“Seriously?” Kate said, cocking her head before taking a deep breath, unsure whether that response was going to get her in trouble.

“I’m not trying to make fun of you, Kate. But what are you trying to say? Spit it out, girl.”

“We’re flying the wrong way.”

“We’re over the Atlantic, almost midway I would think.”

“Maybe… but we’re headed back to Europe then, because we’re flying east. The guy even pulled out a little compass, and it said the same thing.”

Carol smiled. “You know how much this jet costs, with all those sophisticated instruments up front, not to mention two pilots who probably know how to read a compass?”

“Carol, please listen! I don’t care how sophisticated the airplane is, the stars are saying it all: We’re flying the wrong way. Has something happened they’re not telling us about?”

That hit a trigger.

Carol stood in thought for a few seconds, wondering if the pilots had made the serious error of keeping their lead flight attendant out of the loop on something important. She’d had it happen before, and it was an infuriating insult, not to mention a breach of the way the pilots were trained to treat the cabin crew as part of their team.

“Wait a second,” Carol said, her expression hardening as she scooped up the interphone and punched the buttons for the cockpit.

“Yes?”

“Is this the captain?”

“Nope. It’s the copilot. Carol? That you? Dan here.”

“Dan, is there anything you gentlemen want to tell me that you haven’t?”

Silence on the other end for a few seconds before a hesitant answer.

“Ah… what did you have in mind, Carol?”

“I need to come up.”

Carol turned to Kate and gestured for her to follow as the cockpit door interlocks were turned off and the door opened from within. The two women quickly moved inside and secured the door behind them.

“That is technically a breach of protocol, having two of you…” Jerry Tollefson began, stopping when he glanced at the flint-hard expression on Carol’s face and the ashen look on Kate’s.

“Okay, what’s wrong up here? Are we returning to Europe or the UK?”

“Returning? No! We’ve got a radio problem, but everything else is normal.”

“You mean, the passenger satellite system?”

“Yes,” Jerry began, glancing at the copilot. “That… and… several more radios. Basically, we had a real strange loss of all our panel and instruments and computer screens for several minutes a while ago, but everything came back on… except the radios. We’ve lost all normal communication with air traffic control and the company, but they know where we are, and we’re squawking a radio failure code, and…”

“Why are you asking, Carol?” Dan interjected, earning an irritated glance from Jerry.

The lead flight attendant had leaned forward and was reading the compass rose on the horizontal situation indicator. She nodded and glanced at Kate, who she’d forgotten to introduce.

“You should tell me about things like that. I’m supposed to be an integral part of your crew.”

“I apologize, Carol,” Jerry said. “We were still actively trying to work on the problem. I was going to tell you folks as soon as possible.”

Carol gestured to her companion. “This is Kate, who’s been working steerage. She’s got an astronomer back there who claims that we’re flying east.”

“Excuse me?” Dan said, the words propelled by something between a snort and a chuckle.

Carol shot him an icy stare as Kate answered.

“Ah… he’s not an astronomer… I mean, an amateur one, maybe, but…” She repeated the exchange in full, and Jerry Tollefson turned around completely in his seat facing forward to squint out the window. “Dan, turn the overhead lights down.”

“Got it.”

Jerry straightened up suddenly and looked forward at the forward panel, then at Dan’s panel, then back at the two women—puzzlement showing in his face.

“You’re right about the Big Dipper, and… I’m not sure about Polaris… and yes, they should be on Dan’s side, but…”

His attention was diverted by Dan who had suddenly scrambled to follow suit and leaned forward and was now squinting at the whiskey compass, a small pocket flashlight beam now illuminating the instrument.

“Holy shit!” Dan muttered.

“What?” Jerry demanded.

“Good God! I saw this a half hour ago and misread it. I can’t believe it, but I fucking misread it! It’s reading one-zero-three, for God’s sake, with our HSI’s steady on the opposite course. I must have flipped it by a 180 degrees to 280 something, but it’s… it’s east, basically.”

The alarm on Jerry Tollefson’s face was palpable. “What do you mean, you reversed it?”

“I flipped it 180 degrees.”

“How the hell could you do that?”

“I don’t know, Jerry,” Dan shot back, trying unsuccessfully to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “I guess I just assumed we were flying west!”

“Well… what the hell heading are we flying?”

“Apparently 103 degrees, Jerry!”

The two pilots glared at each other for a heartbeat, distrust and disbelief chiseled into their expressions..

“So, we are flying east?” Kate asked, breaking the silence.

“God, I hope not!” Jerry said through clenched teeth as he turned to yank his company iPad out of his flight bag. He flipped the cover open and toggled it on, selecting a map program and watched in frustration as a small target in the middle crawled across a blank screen with no map references.

“Dammit! I forgot it has to have an Internet signal for the map.”

“Wait, Jerry… I have a little thing on my… personal droid… that gives a good magnetic compass heading…” Dan lunged for his flight bag, fumbling loudly for the small smartphone he kept stored during international trips. “Give me a minute… the damned thing has to spin up!”

An interphone call chime rang, and both pilots ignored it at first.

“It’s coming online… hold on… if I remember right, the app is purely magnetic with no external connections needed—”

The call chime rang again, and this time the captain looked up at the overhead panel, irritated to be interrupted.

“Would you like me to get that, Captain?” Carol asked softly, well aware both men were highly agitated. She could feel Kate’s wide-eyed fright without glancing at her.

“What? Yeah. Here.” Tollefson punched the intercom button on the center console as he yanked off his headset and all but tossed it at Carol.

“What are you finding?” he asked Dan.

“Just a second… takes the stupid thing a friggin’ eternity to reboot…” He punched a series of commands onto the touchscreen, waiting for what looked like a miniature attitude indicator to appear, which finally swam into view.

“There! Now, let me get this close to the window… the magnetic heading rose is right there at the top, and it’s saying… SHIT!”

“What?”

An almost feral glance from the copilot confirmed it before the words.

“It’s saying east, Jerry! About one-zero-zero degrees. Jesus God, we’ve been flying into opposite traffic without contact!”

“You’re serious? How long, man? And where the hell are we?”

“Captain?” Carol interjected, her voice soft and urgent, her hand still holding the headset against her ear.

“I don’t know, Jerry. I remember feeling like we were in a turn during the blackout, but when the instruments came back up…”

“How the hell could they be lying to us?” Jerry asked, staring again at his forward panel. “This jet’s worth a fortune… I should be able to trust the readings!”

“Captain…” Carol tried again, but Jerry was fighting complete disbelief, staring again at the forward panel as if the answer was about to pop into view.

“Dan, check to see if anything’s offline, and ladies, stand back while he gets out of the…”

“Captain!” Carol, said, this time forcefully enough to get his attention.

“What?”

She held the interphone out. “You’re going to want to hear this. Now!”

Jerry donned his headset once again while locked on Carol’s eyes. “This is the captain. What’s wrong?”

Carol could see the man’s shoulders slump ever so slightly as a look of hopelessness passed across his face like a veil.

“You’re sure? Can you tell what type?”

“What?” Dan demanded as Jerry swung around to his left and pressed his face against the glass.

“What’s going on, Jerry?” Dan demanded as Jerry looked back at him.

“We have company. Probably fighters. One off our left wing. Check your side.”

The copilot complied, filling in the rest of the nightmare. “Oh, crap, I have one here, too.”

“Who do you suppose they are?” Jerry asked.

“I don’t know… just like you said, where the hell are we?”

“God, I wish I knew!”

“We can’t talk to them. Wait, let’s turn up the cockpit lights as far as we can. Don’t want them to think we’re not in control.”

“Do it!”

Dan turned to the two flight attendants. “I need you guys to get back to the cabin! Extra people up here will look like hijackers!”

Once again, Jerry shot the copilot an exactly-when-did-I-lose-control glance as Carol nodded and ushered Kate out of the door.

Jerry had been sitting in a near catatonic state for several very long seconds, and Dan was choosing the words he’d need to break him out of it, when the captain came back to life on his own, rifling through a small handbook.

“What are you doing?” Dan asked.

“Looking for the universal signals for obeying whatever they want us to do!”

“Okay. I know those procedures by heart,” Dan said. “You do realize we’re in deep shit here, right?”

“Our instruments are lying to us!” Jerry replied, a plaintive whine in his voice.

“Let’s just take care of the problem,” Dan shot back. “We haven’t screwed up anything yet,” he said, almost choking on the words. “How’s our fuel?”

“I’ve already checked. We have at least five hours. Dan? Can you think of any reason a passenger would have a portable VHF radio back there?”

“A what?” The copilot thought through the question for what seemed like an eternity before shaking his head. “No. We could ask, but… we’ll panic people.”

“I think we’re already there,” Jerry answered.

“Are there emergency radios in the life rafts?” Dan asked.

“Not any more. Too expensive and not needed. Someone always knows where we are.”

“Right. Like we knew where Malaysia 370 was.”

“Dan, turn the lights up all the way.”

“Got it.”

“He’s shining a flashlight at us… the guy on the left. I think it’s an F-15. Maybe US markings.”

“Our guys, then?”

“Maybe!”

“Then we’re probably still over the UK somewhere.” Dan added.

“He’s shining his flashlight on his helmet and tapping it.”

“That means he’s asking for radio contact, Jerry. Shine your light on the left side of your face, wave your left hand back and forth by your ear, and shake your head no!”

The flashlight teetered on the brink of falling as the captain regained his grip and nervously followed the instructions, both tapping and waving around his ear.

“You getting a response?” Dan asked.

“Yes! He got it, I think. He’s holding the flashlight on himself again and nodding and pointing ahead.”

“Okay, Jerry, he’s going to do the follow-me night intercept maneuver. He’ll get out ahead and a little below, flash his lights, light his afterburner and turn to our right and we follow.”

“Got it.”

“He’ll guide us down to a suitable field. He’s probably talking to Chicago for us.”

“You think they know by now?” Jerry asked.

“Who?”

“Chicago. Our company?”

“Jerry, I think half the world knows by now. There! He’s moving.”

Jerry’s left hand went to the sidestick controller.

“Don’t punch off the autopilot yet… not until he’s crossed from left to right in front of us. I’ll blink our position lights twice, and then you follow him.”

“Okay. Shit, shit, shit!” Jerry muttered. “I have no idea how much trouble we’re in, but this can’t be good!”

“Relax, Jerry. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Once again the sharp glance to the right, the hard expression betraying irritation, and for some reason Dan couldn’t resist a postscript: “We’ll sort it out on the ground, Jerry.”

The position lights of the F-15 blinked off and on several times to the left and slightly below their altitude before the big fighter began crossing ahead of them, its twin afterburners lighting in two startlingly bright twin streams of flame which looked like they might even lap the nose of the A330. The F-15 pilot completed the crossover and kept moving off to the right at a slight angle as the afterburners went out.

“Okay, Jerry. Punch it off and follow him.”

“Of course! That’s what I’m doing!”

“Jerry, he means now.”

Jerry’s left hand was deflecting the sidestick controller, but the aircraft was not turning.

“I know that!”

“But…”

“I’m… trying.”

Dan glanced to his left, puzzled. “What do you mean, ‘trying’?”

“It’s not following my commands,”

“What? Damned computers!” Dan reached for the switches controlling the autoflight system, finding them off. He turned them back on and then off.

“That should do it. Are we free?”

“No.”

“No? But autoflight and autothrottles are completely disconnected!”

“I’m telling you, I’m shoving the stick to the right and she’s still straight and level.”

“How’s that possible?”

“Dan, how is any of this shit possible! We should have direct law.”

Dan had eased back onto the right seat. The F-15 had moved a bit further to the right and then turned back to steady his heading while he waited for the jumbo jet to respond. Somewhere behind them, the F-15’s wingman was waiting, undoubtedly with armed ordinance.

“Jerry?”

“This is NOT happening! All the computers are off, and I still can’t get a response from the sidestick. Try yours.”

Dan grabbed the right-side control stick, commanding a steep right bank as Jerry let go.

Again the utter lack of change was akin to a physical impact.

He tried again, moving the stick carefully through left, right, up, and down commands, but the aircraft remained rock steady, refusing to follow the commands.

“Jerry, what’s going on here? How can we not have direct control?”

“I don’t know, man! Do you remember anything in the book about a situation like this?”

“No!”

“Nor do I. But she won’t let go. There’s no electricity going to any part of the flight computers.”

A deep sense of foreboding had been percolating away in Dan’s stomach for the past two minutes, and now he felt just outright nauseous. He looked at his right hand, which was deflecting the right sidestick controller ordering what should have been a precipitous turn to the right in an aircraft devoid of any power to the autoflight computers that might oppose him.

And yet the flight path had not changed.

“Nothing, Jerry! It’s like we’re along for the ride,” he said quietly.

The captain was sitting there, Dan noticed, in utter disbelief, the F-15 now maneuvering back to his original position to their left, his wingman somewhere behind.

“Any ideas, Dan?”

“Everything’s on an interlock with the autoflight system. Mess with anything, it’ll disconnect. Right?”

“I always thought so,” Jerry replied, the strain audibly affecting his voice.

“Okay… let’s try this.” Dan Horneman positioned his left hand on the throttles and clicked the disconnect button for the autothrottles, yanking the levers back to the idle position. The complete lack of response from the aircraft felt like a physical blow.

“Jeez… nothing!”

“Try the speedbrakes,” Jerry prompted.

“Whoa! Not at this speed!”

“Just a little… to see if it works!” Jerry snapped, pulling the lever slightly out of the detent himself, but feeling no response. He pulled harder, but there was no change in the aerodynamics of the aircraft. “Maybe drop the landing gear?”

“If we try and it works, Jerry, at this speed it’ll blow the gear doors off.”

“Right. Then we won’t.”

“Dan, you said you know the systems… there’s got to be something we’re controlling that doesn’t depend on electrons.”

Even in the midst of the growing crisis, Jerry’s acknowledgement that his copilot’s knowledge might have some value was a startling concession.

“I’m all ears, man, if you can think of anything,” Jerry continued.

“Well…”

“How about the nosewheel steering? That’s hydraulic.”

Dan was chuckling the laugh of a condemned man, “Yeah, that’ll work at 33,000 feet!”

Jerry looked slightly embarrassed, “Yeah. Got it.”

“Sorry, man. It’s just that I never really thought of it before, you know?”

“Thought of what?”

“That there’s nothing on this flight deck that’s physically connected to anything usable in flight! This bird is nothing but a freaking video game!”

“There’s… nothing?”

“Okay, the rudder is connected by cable to the hydraulics, and the pitch trim is also partially manual as long as we have hydraulic pressure, and the alternate gear extension system uses a cable, but that’s it. Everything else involves electrons. Flight controls, throttles, speed brakes, landing gear, trim system… everything’s electric. We might as well be sitting in a capsule on the ground controlling this machine by satellite telemetry, like the drones—or unmanned aircraft systems—that the air force uses.”

“But, Dan, no one in their right mind would design a system that could lock out its pilots if there’s no counterpart on the ground, right?”

“Well, sure as hell no one else is flying this beast. And all the flight instruments have been lying to us. They’re still lying to us! Look at that moving map! It’s saying we’re over the Atlantic heading west, and instead we’re barreling southeast toward Paris!”

The interphone call chime rang, and Dan punched it up on his panel to find Carol on the other end with a simple but disturbing question.

“What?” Jerry asked.

“Carol wants to know if she should wake up Breem and company?”

“Shit.”

“Is that your final answer?” Dan chuckled.

“No, dammit! That’s all I need is his royal ass up here firing off orders.”

“Jerry…”

“I know, I know. All available resources, and we’ve got a bona fide disaster going on.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to point out the company regulation regarding relief crews and emergencies.”

“Tell me.”

“Whoever is in charge when an emergency occurs remains in charge. The only exception is if a check captain decides to remove a relief captain for cause.”

“And Breem’s no longer a check captain.”

“Right. It’s your ship.”

“Tell her to wait fifteen minutes, then wake them. Maybe the bastard will have some ideas. Who’s his copilot?”

“Wilson. I forget his first name.”

“Okay. Do it.”

Dan passed the order to Carol and rang off.

“We’ve got to get control of this thing,” Jerry said, suddenly pulling himself up in the seat and taking a deep breath. “Okay, look… let’s go back over everything and see if there’s something we’ve missed that could regain control. What if we reversed everything you tried a few minutes ago? I mean, there’s got to be a logical explanation for this, if we can keep from panicking.”

“Panicking?” Dan asked with a rueful chuckle he couldn’t stifle.

“Yeah.”

“Too late, brother. I’m already there.”